<?php
/**
 * <https://y.st./>
 * Copyright © 2017 Alex Yst <mailto:copyright@y.st>
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**/

$xhtml = array(
	'title' => 'My submissions to help promote the university',
	'body' => <<<END
<img src="/img/CC_BY-SA_4.0/y.st./weblog/2017/01/14.jpg" alt="A fancy trailer, painted up like an old wagon" class="weblog-header-image" width="809" height="480" />
<h2 id="general">General news</h2>
<p>
	My website continues to slowly evolve.
	It now has a very subtle background image! If your Web browser doesn&apos;t use background images, you&apos;re not really missing anything though; it&apos;s just a faint circuit board.
	It doesn&apos;t add a whole lot, but it makes the pages a bit less boring to look at.
</p>
<p>
	My mother is insisting that I add certain things to my apartment, such as a microwave oven and lamps, before I&apos;ve even had a chance to see what my apartment looks like! There&apos;s a reasonable chance that I&apos;ll need lamps, though I can&apos;t know that for sure until I see the lighting situation.
	I&apos;m not even sure that I&apos;d use the microwave oven enough to warrant having one in the apartment though.
	Furthermore, Carrying the microwave oven to the apartment is going to be a pain.
	In any case, my mother drove me to Eugine to pick up an inexpensive, second-hand microwave oven for \$5 $a[USD].
	Trying to explain that even if I wanted one, the fossil fuel consumption of the trip wouldn&apos;t be worth it, wouldn&apos;t go well.
	Unfortunately, I pretty much just had to go along with it.
	As it turned out though, we weren&apos;t able to get it just yet, and my mother&apos;s going to make a second trip later today to get it while I&apos;m at work.
</p>
<p>
	<del>As I was able to take my photograph of the day before heading in to work my closing shift, I&apos;m finishing up today&apos;s entry now, before I go to work.</del> <ins>Scratch that.
	Continuing.</ins>
</p>
<p>
	As it turns out, I was a day behind.
	I thought that it was Friday, but it&apos;s actually Saturday today.
	As such, I ended up coming in to work an hour late.
	Lovely.
	I need to be more careful.
	I ended up taking on an extra hour so that someone else could go home early, but then I was sent home an hour early myself, so I left at the time that I was originally scheduled to leave.
</p>
<p>
	I found out that my coworker that likes <a href="http://www.bradsucks.net./">Brad Sucks</a> also likes <a href="https://kelleemaize.com./">Kellee Maize</a>, another free culture artist! They said that they probably found Kellee Maize because of me.
	There&apos;s a reason that I listen to only free artists.
	It&apos;s about more than supporting free artists when I buy free music and avoiding supporting proprietary artists by not buying proprietary music.
	It&apos;s also about supporting free artists by helping new fans find them and not supporting proprietary artists by drawing fans in that direction instead.
</p>
<p>
	My <a href="/a/canary.txt">canary</a> still sings the tune of freedom and transparency.
</p>
<h2 id="university">University life</h2>
<p>
	I completed my email response to the university&apos;s questions with the following letter:
</p>
<blockquote>
<p>
	I&apos;d love to attend your event! One quick question though: what software is needed to attend? If this is an Adobe Flash meeting, I won&apos;t be able to attend.
	Flash is too much of a barrier to entry for me, being that it&apos;s proprietary software with no available source code.
	Assuming that attendance is possible, these are my answers to your questions:
</p>
<p>
	I chose to study here at University of the People for a couple of reasons.
	First off, the university promised to offer open course content.
	I&apos;m a strong supporter of free culture, and while I understand that not all open course content fits into free culture, there is a large overlap.
	Second, with University of the People&apos;s tuition only being \$100 USD per course per term, I can *afford* to go back to school now! I don&apos;t have to wait until I finish paying off loans and save up to make getting a degree possible.
</p>
<p>
	Time and money were my biggest hardships in attending school in the past.
	At the last university that I attended, like at University of the People, a full course load was two courses per term.
	However, in my final term for my associate&apos;s degree (I was going to continue on to obtain a bachelor&apos;s degree though), they threatened to cut off my financial aid if I didn&apos;t take three courses, instead of two courses then one more course as a later term.
	I couldn&apos;t afford to have my financial aid cut off, but I also didn&apos;t have time for three courses.
	I had work, school, and family to deal with.
	One particular family member was very pushy, always wanting me to give them my time.
	I couldn&apos;t keep up with everything, and I inevitably failed.
	Here at University of the People though, I don&apos;t have that problem.
	I can afford the tuition without financial aid, so there&apos;s nothing to cut off.
	If live gets too busy or I&apos;m taking a particularly difficult course, I can drop down to one course per term for a while and University of the People won&apos;t even blink.
</p>
<p>
	University of the People is a low-tuition, online, accredited university offering courses globally.
	They accept and embrace the use of free software such as LibreOffice by students, and much of their course material is free culture.
</p>
<p>
	My favorite thing about studying here is probably the lack of specific software requirements.
	My old school had software requirements coming out the nose.
	Some were ignorable.
	If I recall, they required that everyone use Internet Explorer.
	Internet Explorer isn&apos;t even available for my platform, Debian (Linux).
	Others could be partially worked around.
	For example, they required that all students install and use Microsoft Office.
	There was actually a *graded assignment* that involved taking a screenshot to prove that you had an official, &quot;genuine&quot; copy of Microsoft Office installed.
	If I recall, I couldn&apos;t figure out how to install it on Debian, failed that assignment, then proceeded to use Libre Office (which worked perfectly well, there was no reason to require Microsoft Office) on all other graded assignments.
	Then there was the requirement that we use Adobe Flash.
	Adobe Flash is proprietary software and known to be full of security holes.
	I ended up setting up a virtual system in a hypervisor, then installing Flash on my virtual system, keeping it quarantined.
	Here at University of the People, I don&apos;t have to jump through *any* of those hoops.
	Another thing that I enjoy about University of the People is that they embrace Creative Commons licensing.
	As a strong supporter of free culture, the CC BY and CC BY-SA licenses are very dear to me, and being able to mark any file that I upload as being covered by CC BY-SA has been very awesome.
</p>
<p>
	A degree in computer science from University of the People will help me show that I&apos;m qualified for computer-related jobs that I seek in the future.
	The courses that I need to take along the way will also prepare me for those jobs.
</p>
<p>
	I&apos;m a computer science student at University of the People.
	I&apos;m very much a supporter of free software and free culture, and believe the two to be highly intertwined.
	I&apos;m an asexual, aromantic, and atheist.
	As I let go of the traditional gender roles that have been ingrained in me by society since I was a child, I&apos;m also quickly finding that I&apos;m becoming agendered.
	I was probably only ever masculine because that&apos;s what I was trained to be.
	I use Debian on my laptop and server, and Replicant on my mobile device.
	Though I was born right-handed, I was able to become ambidextrous with a couple years of practice.
	I highly recommend it, it&apos;s great having full use of both hands.
	It feels like I&apos;ve recovered from a handicap that I&apos;ve always had.
	I keep a website at &lt;https://y.st./&gt;, where I keep a public journal and archive all of my coursework, among other things.
</p>
</blockquote>
<p>
	The student ambasador form stupidly demands both a home telephone number and a cellular telephone number.
	I mean, really!? It&apos;s bad enough to demand a telephone number at all, but to demand that people have <strong>*two*</strong> and that they be of two different and specific types? Seriously!? I filled both fields with &quot;I do not have telephone service.&quot; though, and the form accepted it.
	My answers to their questions were as follows:
</p>
<blockquote>
<p>
	English, some Esperanto, XML, CSS, JavaScript, PHP, Lua, Python, some Java ...
</p>
</blockquote>
<blockquote>
<p>
	I&apos;m happy to be studying here at University of the people.
	At his school, technological barriers posed be specific software requirements are dropped, allowing those of us on operating systems such as Debian to have a fair shot at online education.
	The very low tuition also makes getting an education affordable.
</p>
</blockquote>
<blockquote>
<p>
	At my past university, technological requirements always got in the way.
	The school wanted me to use a very specific Web browser, a requirement that was ignorable, but left me unable to get tech support when I needed it.
	They wanted me to use a very specific office suite, which wasn&apos;t available for my operating system.
	There was even a *graded assignment* in which you prove that you have that office suite installed! Needless to say, I had to fail that assignment.
	Then there was the requirement that Adobe Flash be installed.
	I had to quarantine that in a virtualized system to keep my main system system safe from Flash&apos;s vulnerabilities, which was a pain, not to mention the fact that I don&apos;t like running proprietary software such as Flash at all in the first place.
</p>
</blockquote>
<blockquote>
<p>
	University of the People is a highly-accessible online university with very low tuition.
	They use open (sometimes even free-culture-compatible) course content too, making it legal to share the provided educational resources with your friends and neighbors.
</p>
</blockquote>
<blockquote>
<p>
	My favorite thing about studying here at University of the People is the ability to complete my coursework and interact with the school using only free software (free as in freedom, not gratis).
	I don&apos;t have to compromise my machine to complete my studies! My least favorite thing would probably be the miscommunication though.
	I was sent an email telling me to register for courses for next term following my first term.
	I couldn&apos;t register for the courses that I needed to, and ended up in a course that I didn&apos;t belong in.
	I later found out that had I not registered for any courses for my second term, the university would have registered me for the courses that I&apos;d needed.
	But the university is the one that told me to register for courses in the first place! Doing so triggered a bug that put me in the wrong place though.
</p>
</blockquote>
<blockquote>
<p>
	A degree in computer science from University of the People will help me show that I&apos;m qualified for computer-related jobs that I seek in the future.
	The courses that I need to take along the way will also prepare me for those jobs.
</p>
</blockquote>
<blockquote>
<p>
	I&apos;m a computer science student at University of the People.
	I&apos;m very much a supporter of free software and free culture, and believe the two to be highly intertwined.
	I&apos;m an asexual, aromantic, and atheist.
	As I let go of the traditional gender roles that have been ingrained in me by society since I was a child, I&apos;m also quickly finding that I&apos;m becoming agendered.
	I was probably only ever masculine because that&apos;s what I was trained to be.
	I use Debian on my laptop and server, and Replicant on my mobile device.
	Though I was born right-handed, I was able to become ambidextrous with a couple years of practice.
	I highly recommend it, it&apos;s great having full use of both hands.
	It feels like I&apos;ve recovered from a handicap that I&apos;ve always had.
	I keep a website at &lt;https://y.st./&gt;, where I keep a public journal and archive all of my coursework, among other things.
</p>
</blockquote>
<p>
	The first question asked about what languages I speak.
	If I&apos;d thought about it at the time, I would have put that answer in a complete sentence like the rest, making it meaningful out of context as well.
</p>
<p>
	I looked at my <a href="/en/coursework/BUS1101/Little_Caesars_culture.xhtml"><span title="Principles of Business Management">BUS 1101</span> essay</a>, and it seems that it might be a zero-point assignment.
	What was even the point of having us complete it? That week was particularly slow for me, so it thankfully didn&apos;t add a bunch of stress to my load, but I put a lot of effort into it just to now find out that it didn&apos;t even matter.
	If I&apos;d been stressing out that week, I might be a bit angry now.
	It looks like I did not do well on the final exam, and as a result, I didn&apos;t do well in the course.
	I did fairly well at all the written work (so it&apos;d be nice if that last essay had actually counted), but I really sucked at the quizzes, which dragged my grade down.
	Oh well, it&apos;s still a passing grade, it&apos;s just one that drags my $a[GPA] down.
	To make things more frustrating, I wasn&apos;t even supposed to be in that course, so my $a[GPA] should never have been dragged down by it.
	That said, I did refactor my degree plan a bit and decide that I should have taken that course as an elective anyway.
	But did I do that to give reason to my taking that course, or would I have ended up in that course eventually anyway?
</p>
<p>
	The late course registration period seems to be open now, but I still don&apos;t have a response as to whether I got into the courses that I asked for.
	I&apos;m sure that everything&apos;s fine and I&apos;ll be able to attend the courses that I asked for, but that dream the other day makes me a bit paranoid.
	Additionally, after the late registration period closes, it&apos;ll be too late to replace any courses that I&apos;m not accepted into.
	It also seems that I have more time off than I realized.
	Between most terms, there&apos;s a one-week period.
	The final week only includes a final exam, which can only be taken during the first half of the week, meaning that the second half is basically time off.
	If you take the final exam on the first day as I did this term, you basically get two weeks off between terms.
	However, between this term and next, there&apos;s an extra week; I get three weeks off instead of two.
	Considering that I&apos;m going to want to get started the night before, as course material will be available before midnight in my time zone, I have about ten days left until I start my coursework again.
</p>
END
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